Summer camp gets technical

A dozen students are learning skills to pay the bills during a week-long summer camp.

Techkids Camp is a summer program at NWO Innovation Centre that introduces youth to technology-related careers by providing introductory exercises on coding, web design, 3D printing robotics and tech-related field trips.

EZ Robots DJ Sures flew from Calgary to teach a dozen youth, aged nine to 12, about robotics and careers in technology Monday.
“It’s extremely important for children to be recognized that they have a lot of creativity,” Sures said.

“As adults we’ve heard the word no way too many times and that has prevented us from being as creative as children are, and they are limitless.”

Sures add that it’s important to flourish and nurture the ideas that youth bring to the table.

Throughout the day the youth learned about how to create the circuit boards and the plastics.

The kids had the opportunity to use the 3D printers, programming software as well as motors and batteries to build singing and dancing robots.

“The kids are picking up a ton of technical information,” Sures said. “They already understand how to do it, they have so many phones, and so much computer technology in their life that they are usually the ones teaching us.”

Sures said he is giving them energy and confidence to know that they can achieve those goals, even if that is making a robot to take out the trash.

The purpose of the Techkids program is to allow children to recognize themselves that they can achieve their goals.

Eleven-year-old Karlyn Wiskemann hopes to work in robots in the future.

“I would like to work with robots,” Wiskemann said. “I think that it’s a very cool subject to be able to work on.”

Wiskemann added that she hopes to be able to make a robot that can help her out with both the laundry and dishes.

The youngster learned how to make robots from 3D printers as well as how to make the molds and the plastic.

She was surprised at how long the process took but it certainly didn’t scare her away from wanting to pursue robotics in the future.
Wiskemann said it’s important to know that the robots can’t do everything for you.

“You have to be able to do some stuff on your own like you need to go to school on your own and do work so you aren’t sitting at home all day doing nothing.”